{"version":"https:\/\/jsonfeed.org\/version\/1","title":"[K]ayinworks Feed","home_page_url":"https:\/\/kayin.moe\/posts","feed_url":"https:\/\/kayin.moe\/posts.json","description":"Writings from the Creator of I Wanna be the Guy and Brave Earth: Prologue.","author":{"name":"Kayin"},"items":[{"title":"Game Journal: Thief - Deadly Shadows","date_published":"2026-04-14T00:00:00+00:00","id":"https:\/\/kayin.moe\/thief-deadly-shadows","url":"https:\/\/kayin.moe\/thief-deadly-shadows","content_html":"

I didn't expect to play Deadly Shadows<\/strong>, but I also didn't expect to play hours of Thief mods and fan missions, so here we are. I want to start, for clarity, by saying I really like<\/em> this game. I really enjoyed playing it. I liked the tone of this game, which rests somewhere between Thief 1 and 2. I liked the ideas to mix up the formula that went into this game.<\/p>\n

So with that all abundantly clear, let me also say that Thief: Deadly Shadows is such a piece of shit<\/em>. It's a huge piece of shit<\/em>! Not as a game, though this does<\/em> affect the game, but as a collection of code<\/em> -- as an object you possess on your computer machine. Thief: Deadly Shadows is shit, and thanks to a loving community of modders, you can install the extremely important Sneaky Upgrade<\/a> and have shined shit<\/em>.<\/p>\n

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Running Thief 3 fucking sucks<\/em>. Visual options won't kick in til you restart the game. That's okay, because everything will restart the game. Load a save? Restart the game. Move to a new mission? Restart the game. Move within some areas of a mission? also<\/em> restart the game. Nothing feels cheaper than getting flashbanged by your desktop between areas. Somehow, mantling is worse<\/em> than the previous two games. Not only is it less reliable, but 20% of the time you get stuck in a strange floating state, skating across the ground, unable to jump until you do something to snap out of it. Fortunately, while the Sneaky Upgrade can't fix<\/em> this but it can give you a hot-key combo to at least break out of it. There are like three difference Thief executables to launch the game and only one of them allows alt-tabbing. The game is based around a third person view and animations, even though people almost universally play in first person. This leads to weird first person artifacts, as the camera is directly tied to Garrett's head. In a weird way I do<\/em> like how immersive this feels -- I like being able to see your body in first person -- but like everything there is a level of jank<\/em> that kinda runs it. Stuff like sliding off of banisters and railings because of your leg animations just feel awful<\/em>.<\/p>\n

... Also the game crashes all the time. Pick up and item? Crash. Walk down a alleyway? Crash. Saving just in case the game crashes? Believe it or not, also crash<\/em>(Also this corrupts your save, so make sure to just make new saves)<\/em><\/span><\/span>!<\/p>\n

Made in the cursed, broken, and partially unfinished Flesh Engine<\/em> (an offshoot of Unreal Engine 2), both Thief 3 and Deus Ex: Invisible War<\/strong> were cursed to try and squeeze themselves onto the XBox, a console with exactly zero lasting legacy and cultural importance beyond Halo<\/strong>. The original XBox is basically the Street Fighter 1<\/strong> of consoles. \"Oh the original xbox? Yeah I loved my 360!\"<\/em>...<\/p>","tags":["Game Log","Games"],"image":"\/user\/pages\/01.writing\/thief-deadly-shadows\/header.jpg"},{"title":"Game Journal: Thief 2X and The Black Parade","date_published":"2026-04-06T00:00:00+00:00","id":"https:\/\/kayin.moe\/thief-2x-tbp","url":"https:\/\/kayin.moe\/thief-2x-tbp","content_html":"

I was ready to be done, or maybe jump to the divisive Thief 3<\/strong>, but the more I played, the more people tried to tempt me to try stuff in the FM<\/strong> or 'Fan mission' community. Thief has a series falls in the same place as Doom<\/strong>, with a little bit of Bethesda Game<\/em> energy. These are games that are kept alive by their communities. The history of these games is inseparable from the history of the people who keep them alive, not only with new content, but even working at all<\/em>. Like Doom, the Thief fandom has made an artform out of mission making. Their techniques, still with the same tools used by Looking Glass Studio<\/em>, surpasses their work at every turn. This is almost be expected for any game that develops a mapping scene. A developer's time with its own engine is limited, both in time and scope. They need to move on to newer things, in newer engines. Meanwhile fans, be it old games, or old hardware, can ask the question of \"but what is<\/em> actually possible?\". What if<\/em> you made an open world n64 game<\/a>? What if you just... kept<\/em> making Doom levels for 30 years?<\/p>\n

I played two of the most well popular and historically important Fan Mission packs -- complete games in their own right, with their own menus, cutscenes, voice acting and music. The first was the 2023 Thief 1 opus, The Black Parade<\/strong>, while the second was one of the biggest fan projects of the early 2000s, Thief 2X<\/strong><\/p>\n

Thief: The Black Parade<\/a><\/h1>\n
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The Black Parade<\/a> is a love letter to Thief Gold<\/strong>, so much so to the point that it is one of the few large campaigns made for it, rather than Thief 2. The Black Parade is about loving the past, loving the parts of Thief that got left behind in Thief 2. Made over 7 years, and representing 25 years of community experience, The Black Parade feels like what the future would look like without things like GPU generations. The level of craft is incredible. Taking influence from Life of the Party<\/em> (and more so, probably hundreds of FMs that already evolved that idea further), the Black Parade presents missions that are sprawling, complex, but parsable<\/em>. The city is realized in a way only the cutscenes of Thief Gold could truly realize, and every mission you have to wander parts of it to find your target. You burgle houses and shops along the way, picking up stray cash as you case your target and look for the best entrance. Old aesthetics, mixed with very modern design sensibilities. Not modern to the level of over-polish<\/em>, the surge of modern gaming. TBP is modern in the sense that he comes with all<\/em> the lessons gaming has taught us, applying them not to bring Thief into the future, but to improve The Old Ways<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Appropriately, our protagonist Hume is an old, dogged...<\/p>","tags":["Game Log","Games"],"image":"\/user\/pages\/01.writing\/thief-2x-tbp\/2xspoiler.png"},{"title":"Thief Embraces the Unreality of Stealth","date_published":"2026-03-24T00:00:00+00:00","id":"https:\/\/kayin.moe\/thief","url":"https:\/\/kayin.moe\/thief","content_html":"

At the end of my Perfect Dark<\/strong> revisit<\/a>, I mused about the difference between US\/European and Japanese game design in regards to realism<\/em> in the 80s and 90s. To summarize, the trend I noticed is that Western games often tried to simulate reality<\/em>. Fall damage, ledge grabbing, a particular fondness for momentum, and the much hated limited ammo<\/em>. Strategy games tend to be military tactics simulators. You see the stealth game born in the wonderfully archaic Castle Wolfenstein<\/strong> for the Apple II. It's sequel, Beyond Castle Wolfenstein<\/strong>, took a strange, unforgiving stealth rogue-like and added even more layers of spy-craft, like ID checks and bribery. These simulated<\/em> reality, but didn't behave cohesively to advance the game design. Instead, they were fluff that interfered with the actual core game.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile Japanese games (and maybe US arcade games)(I have this whole thought in my head right now about how US Arcade game design was almost entirely separate from console and PC game design and how early PC game design is either 14 year olds OR really old Table Top RPG guys, but I haven't done the research yet to put this into a coherent thesis)<\/em><\/span><\/span> tended early on to abstract. How do we gamify reality? Ridiculous platformer physics and actiony shmups with crisp control. Many of their strategy games are less simulationist and more outright gamey and arcadey. These two different bubbles put focus on very different aspects of game design, and evolve in two different directions. They both learn from and are in constant communication with each other, but there was still a very distinct separation in philosophy. Relevant here in particular Metal Gear<\/strong>, which in 1987<\/em>, understood what it meant to gamify stealth in a way most western devs failed to understand(Twin Snakes is SO SO funny for this very reason)<\/em><\/span><\/span>, even into the mid 2000s.<\/p>\n

... But trends aren't absolute. Koei<\/em> practically made nothing but hard nosed, simulationist Grand Strategy<\/em> games and not every western platformer was pure Euro-Jank. Goldeneye and Perfect Dark did<\/em> stealth, but they didn't get<\/em> stealth. Who was the exception over here, who got it<\/em>? Who figured it out over here first? Back in that piece, I theorized maybe it was time to look into Thief<\/strong> and well... <\/p>\n

Yeah the answer is Thief.<\/em><\/p>\n

Thief: The Dark Project<\/a><\/h1>\n
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Before I finish this game design thesis, I need to talk about the most important thing about Thief.<\/p>\n

Thief is fucking cool.<\/em><\/p>\n

Thief is so<\/em> fucking cool. Looking Glass Studios<\/em> was a company of artists, writers, and musicians. 1998 is the year of Unreal<\/strong>. The FPS is the test bed genre of technology. Meanwhile, Thief is, technically<\/em>, ugly. Its geometry is crude, and its textures repetitive. Still, all a good artist needs is light and shadow. The World has an uncanny-valley feel to it, like a strange papercraft playset. This is a strangeness the designers lean into, as the game becomes increasingly more occult and surreal....<\/p>","tags":["Game Log","Games"],"image":"\/user\/pages\/01.writing\/thief\/burrick.jpg"},{"title":"Returning to Goldeneye and Perfect Dark","date_published":"2026-03-06T00:00:00+00:00","id":"https:\/\/kayin.moe\/goldeneye-perfect-dark","url":"https:\/\/kayin.moe\/goldeneye-perfect-dark","content_html":"

I love hating on Rare<\/strong>. I love hating on pre-2000s UK games. I love hating on basically every euro-whatever<\/em> genre you can think of. Half of this is joking. It was a very different gaming culture over there, with different social pressures(Though can we trust the social pressures that makes Dizzy the Egg make sense?)<\/em><\/span><\/span> due to a focus on cheap PC gaming. Half of this isn't even fair(I'll take an c64 or amiga euro-platformer over any DOS platformer, even Dizzy the Egg, don't @ me)<\/em><\/span><\/span>!<\/p>\n

... But I still hate<\/em> Rare, and I hate Donkey Kong Country<\/strong> and I like to pretend the UK didn't produce a single good videogame until Blast Corps<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately they made that one<\/em>. They also made a few other games after that, and while I can accuse Banjo-Kazooie<\/strong> of colonizing<\/em> 3d platformers, forcing its disgustingly european focus collectibles<\/em> on a genre better inherited by Tony Hawk<\/em>(Tony Hawk games, which themselves are Vert colonizing Street Skating???)<\/em><\/span><\/span>... I also have to admit that Goldeneye and Perfect Dark are pretty good<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Goldeneye 007<\/a><\/h1>\n

Goldeneye is a strange game. Not so much at the time, but in the lineage of FPSs. It makes me think of Command & Conquer<\/strong>. Where Warcraft<\/strong> and Starcraft<\/strong> mentally dominated peoples minds as to what an RTS should be, C&C was a different, alien world of alternative core assumptions, playing at a pace and in a style that almost feels like it comes from another dimension. C&C has this weird arcadiness<\/em> to it, the same type of arcadiness mobile phone games inherited.<\/p>\n

Goldeneye feels like this, but for console FPSs. The big, core question we must ask in the 90s is 'can you play a console FPS like a normal<\/em> FPS?' To that question, Goldeneye answers somewhere between 'No' and 'We're not Sure'.<\/p>\n

Goldeneye is, factually, an FPS... but it doesn't play like one. You can, by backporting years of console FPS experience to it, play it like one, but that's not the natural state the game was designed to support. It makes sense when you realize how early it came out in the life of the N64. This game began development not knowing if the controller was even up to the task. They didn't know if players could be that coordinated! Goldeneye was designed in a way that, if need would require it, Rare could convert it to a rail shooter<\/em>.<\/p>\n

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I was not surprised when I read Goldeneye took a lot of inspiration from Virtua Cop. They both have similarly paced action. Enemies pop up with a similar beat, with unique animations, and responding to locational damage in a similar way(Well, Virtua Cop's is just aesthetic, where GE turns it into a real gameplay feature)<\/em><\/span><\/span>. In the long hallways of Goldeneye, one is often using the Aim Mode<\/em> to shoot, like a controller controlled Lightgun game. Several stages end up feeling like a...<\/p>","tags":["Game Log"],"image":"\/user\/pages\/01.writing\/goldeneye-perfect-dark\/angel.jpeg"},{"title":"Game Journal: Baby Steps","date_published":"2026-02-05T15:33:56+00:00","id":"https:\/\/kayin.moe\/baby-steps","url":"https:\/\/kayin.moe\/baby-steps","content_html":"

I've been a pretty consistent fan of Bennett Foddy's work. I love Getting Over It<\/strong> to the point where I got a Gold Pot by accident, just by casually playing over and over again. I've even had the pleasure to hang out with Foddy, giving a talk with him on troll games in a time so long ago it feels like The Old Internet(It was called fucking ROFLCON)<\/em><\/span><\/span>. There, also I had the pleasure of also meeting and talking games with Maxi Boch, one of the other co-creators of Baby Steps<\/strong>. Some of the conversations we had over 10 years ago make a lot more sense now... So yeah, I'm already bias toward liking this game. So that Gabe Cuzzillo guy must be pretty great then by association. His voice acting certainly was.<\/p>\n

This is, as far as tone and themes go, a Foddy game<\/em>, feeling like the next logical step after Getting Over It. I don't know how much of this was directly him<\/em>(This game has a lot of his voice but this is clearly presented as being primary by three people and they all deserve the credit)<\/em><\/span><\/span>, but clearly everyone involved knew what the target style was. Baby Steps is perhaps the easiest to control game he's worked on. You merely<\/em> have to press a shoulder button and position your foot for each and every step<\/em>. Nate, the baby-like player character, at least tries<\/em> to stay upright. But a game being \"easier\" to control doesn't mean it will, as a whole<\/em>, be easier. This just gives them more design room. A lot more room. The world the size of Babysteps is absurd, and impossible to transverse in any other Foddy title. While you start out awkward, like a baby, your steps become faster and more confident as you progress. Eventually, simply through player skill, you can almost<\/em> walk like a normal person. Sometimes<\/em>. On flat terrain. Going straight<\/em>.<\/small><\/p>\n

This fits into a lot of common themes in Foddy's work. Where people think about mean spirited frustration and \"unfair\" control schemes, Foddy is equally interested in sports and human physicality. How absurd<\/em> the things we do as humans are! How do we capture the weight of these things, while in something as risk free and streamlined as a videogame? A core feeling that comes up in Baby Steps is \"What does it mean to hike?\" <\/p>\n

This is a feeling most videogames struggle to capture(Death Stranding being the other one for sure that comes to mind)<\/em><\/span><\/span>. Games are naturally built for us to reach the content<\/em>. You weave through worlds, slowly seeing everything you need to see. Maybe you find something hidden now and again, but rarely do you look at something interesting in the horizon and decide \"... That's too far away to bother.\"<\/p>\n

A hike is defined not just by the hike itself, but what isn't hiked. You can't go to a national park and...<\/p>","tags":["Game Log"],"image":"\/user\/pages\/01.writing\/baby-steps\/header.jpg"},{"title":"Silksong Loves You","date_published":"2025-09-23T00:00:00+00:00","id":"https:\/\/kayin.moe\/silksong","url":"https:\/\/kayin.moe\/silksong","content_html":"

I was, as is my normal way, not<\/em> on the hype train for Silksong<\/strong>. I wasn't reading updates, I wasn't Silkposting<\/a>. I wasn't desperately waiting for a release date. I had no emotional stakes in its existence.<\/p>\n

I really liked Hollow Knight<\/strong><\/a>, but I didn't crave more of it. It genuinely helped remind me what the weird, vibey 'genre' we clumsily call Metroidvanias<\/em> are actually about. They aren't about color coded doorway and breaking blocks<\/a>, but exploration. Yet the tools that could<\/em> be used to create a sense of exploration became<\/em> the genre in peoples minds. Hollow Knight forwent most of those tools, most of the \"Quality of Life\"<\/a>, and let players get lost. It rewarded<\/em> them for getting lost, by making sure there was real, substantial<\/em> content in every direction. You weren't left struggling to find the golden path<\/em>, because there was, at least relative to the rest of the genre, little sequence to break.<\/p>\n

Hollow Knight... woke me up, in a sense. The first hour or two of playing it, I assumed it wasn't actually that great<\/em>. The map just seemed wrong... the flow seemed wrong... areas seemed too samey -- how am I going to avoid getting lost, if you're designing like this? Isn't your invisible hand supposed to be guiding me?<\/p>\n

... And then I actually got lost.<\/em><\/p>\n

I didn't particularly care for the art style(I don't get why THIS is the thing every HK inspired game chooses to copy)<\/em><\/span><\/span> (Though I respected it). I didn't really dig the whole bug thing<\/em>(I wasn't a bug mother yet, okay?)<\/em><\/span><\/span>. I didn't enjoy most of the bosses that people swore were really good<\/em>. None of that mattered. Playing a game that rejected 10 years of indie metroidvania \"common knowledge\" revitalized my mind.<\/p>\n

Silksong revitalized my heart<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n

I don't mean that in the sense I might talk about an Undertale<\/strong>, a game with a story that genuinely moved me. Silksong has its moments, but that's not the type of feeling I'm talking about. Silksong is a game that reminded me why I love<\/em> videogames. My mind, hands, and heart; all in sync. Moving felt better, all the characters felt more fleshed out, the boss fights finally fun and engaging. Sure, I was getting less lost, but in exchange I got more of a sense of place<\/em>. Hallownest feels like a core sample taken from deep in the earth, showing all the layers of rock and sediment. By contrast, Pharloom feels real and lived in. Pilgrims trace paths through the world. Popup 'towns' show up, both for mutual survival and sometimes simply profit. Instead of descending deeper and deeper into a dead world, you climb through the rungs of society. The ruins of old forgotten societies still exist, but they feel more like the outliers. Like Bloodborne<\/strong>, it doesn't feel like you're a thousand years too late, but that you are there in the moment<\/em>...<\/p>","tags":["Game Log","Games"],"image":"\/user\/pages\/01.writing\/silksong\/dontbethere.jpg"},{"title":"Game Journal: Lunacid - Tears of the Moon","date_published":"2025-09-01T00:00:00+00:00","id":"https:\/\/kayin.moe\/tears-of-the-moon","url":"https:\/\/kayin.moe\/tears-of-the-moon","content_html":"

With comments like \"Lunacid sure isn't that much like King's Field or Shadow Tower\" there was a lot of \"Okay so when are you going to play Tears of the Moon<\/strong>?\"<\/p>\n

Lunacid: Tears of the Moon, is a breezy prequel to Lunacid, notably made with the ancient Sword of Moonlight: King's Field Making Tool<\/strong>. It's janky, it's hard to get to display right, and it was one of the few times I was happy about Steam Input profiles(Though when I turned it on for this game, the universal 'control windows' chords became active and I wish I could tell Valve and Microsoft that no, I NEVER, EVER want to control my actual PC with a controller, please fuck off)<\/em><\/span><\/span>. Look, it can't be helped, these are primitive tools from a primitive yet beautiful age.<\/p>\n\n

It's certainly more King's Field-y, but with the Lunacid sauce poured over it. It's less difficulty focused than most KF games, but more grindy and combat focused than Lunacid. It's a nice middle ground. Kira is very aware of how many of the fun parts of King's Field is when you find something a little exploitable. A MP refill pool you can grind around, an overpowered sword or spell, whatever. It skips the struggling, down-tempo periods of those games. I enjoy those parts, but I also enjoy this leaner cut. While there is MORE combat, like Lunacid, it feels more like it exists for texture than for its own sake. To slow you down, to let you play with your toys, to make the act of dungeon crawling still feel dangerous, while presenting very little real danger. There is just enough real threat to stop you from blindly blitzing through levels<\/p>\n

Some other random notes.<\/p>\n